Uplifting Glimpses of Truth

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Pila - October 24, 2011

Blissful awareness of reality is a state described by Hindu teachings in the phrase sat-chit-ananda (reality-awareness-bliss.) However, consider the first noble truth of Buddhism, the concept of dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction - a "fundamental unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned existence" in terms used by Stim at the outset of this project), and satchitananda may seem to be a distant, perhaps unattainable notion. People generally are familiar with the aha-moment, a situation of grokking to use Heinlein’s term, and the idea of epiphany: in each of those moments one may feel an uplifting glimpse of truth. Are those moments exceptions in mundane life where dukkha is a more continual factor? How is it possible for suffering and dissatisfaction to co-exist with a blissful awareness of reality?